“Now, look down this side!  Do you know a quarter section of that big timber is worth from $10,000 to $40,000 to its owners, the people of the United States?  Do you know you can build a cottage of six rooms out of one tree, the very size a workman needs?  The workmen who vote own those trees!  Do you know the Smelter Lumber Company takes all for nothing, half a million of it a year?  Do you know that Smelter, itself, is built on two-thousand acres of coal lands—­stolen—­stolen from the Government as clearly as if the Smelter teams had hauled it from a Government coal pit?  Do you know there isn’t a man in the Land Office who hasn’t urged and urged and urged the Government to sue for restitution of that steal, and headquarters pretend to be doubtful so that the Statute of Limitations will intervene?”

On the inner side, the Ridge dropped to an Alpine meadow that billowed up another slope through mossed forests to the snow line of the Holy Cross Mountains.  What the girl saw was a sylvan world of spruce, then the dark green pointed larches where the jubilant rivers rioted down from the snow.  What the man saw was—­a Challenge.

“See those settlers’ cabins at an angle of forty-five?  Need a sheet anchor to keep ’em from sliding down the mountain!  Fine farm land, isn’t it?  Makes good timber chutes for the land looters!  We’ve to pass and approve all homesteads in the National Forests.  You may not know it; but those are homesteads.  You ask Senator Moyese when he weeps crocodile tears ’bout the poor, poor homesteader run off by the Forest Rangers!  If the homesteader got the profits, there’d be some excuse; but he doesn’t.  He gets a hired man’s wages while he sits on the homestead; and when he perjures himself as to date of filing, he may get a five or ten extra, while your $40,000 claim goes to Mr. Fat-Man at a couple of hundreds from Uncle Sam’s timber limits; and the Smelter City Herald thunders about the citizen’s right to homestead free land, about the Federal Government putting up a fence to keep the settler off.  That fellow—­that fellow in the first shack can’t speak a word of English.  Smelter brought a train load of ’em in here; and they’ve all homesteaded the big timbers, a thousand of ’em, foreigners, given homesteads in the name of the free American citizen.  Have you seen anything about it in the newspaper?  Well—­I guess not.  It isn’t a news feature.  We’re all full up about the great migration to Canada.  We like to be given a gold brick and the glad hand.  Of course, they’ll farm that land.  One man couldn’t clear that big timber for a homestead in a hundred years.  Of course, they are not homesteading free timber for the big Smelter.  Of course not!  They didn’t loot the redwoods of California that way—­two hundred thousand acres of ’em—­seventy-five millions of a steal.  Hm!’” muttered Wayland.  “Calls himself Moyese—­Moses!  Senator Smelter!  Senator Thief!  Senator Beef Steer—­”